Incident overview
Microsoft has reported a service disruption affecting Azure, its cloud computing platform. The issue originated during a scheduled maintenance window intended to update the platform’s underlying infrastructure. Instead, the update caused several services to become unavailable or unstable for a period of time.
Specifically, the disruption impacted Azure VPN Gateway, which allows remote workers to connect to company data securely, and ExpressRoute, which provides a private connection between a company's office and Microsoft’s data centres. Some users of VMware services hosted on Azure also reported failures.
Impact on business operations
For a small or medium business, this type of outage typically manifests as an inability to access shared folders, internal applications, or virtual desktops hosted in the cloud. Employees working from home may have found their VPN connections failing to establish or dropping frequently during the event.
Microsoft has since rolled back the changes that caused the issue, and most services should now be operating normally. However, the company has stated they are still investigating why the standard maintenance procedure resulted in such a widespread failure across different service regions.
Identifying and resolving connection issues
If your business is currently experiencing network instability, it is important to determine whether the fault lies with your local internet connection or the cloud provider.
We recommend that business owners or office managers check the Azure Service Health portal within their Microsoft 365 admin centre. This dashboard provides a factual record of service interruptions specific to your account. If the status is marked as 'Resolved' but your systems are still not functioning, a manual restart of your local gateway equipment or virtual machines may be necessary to clear cached errors.
Ark Assist is monitoring the situation for further updates from Microsoft regarding the root cause to ensure future maintenance windows do not pose similar risks to client stability.